A  Talk  About  Books 
J.  N.  Larned 


L32t      A   talk 


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A  Talk  About  Books. 


A  TALK  ABOUT  BOOKS 

Addressed  originally  to  the 
students  of  the  Central  High 
School,  Buffalo  ...  By  J.  N. 
Larned,  Editor  of  "History 
for  Ready  Reference  and 
Topical  Reading" 


/  4  8-3  7 

The  Peter  Paul  Book  Co. 
Buffalo 

IviAR    1906 


Copyright,  1897,  by 
J.  N.  Larned. 


Printed  and  bound  by  the 
Peter  Paul  Book  Company 
in  Buffalo,  New  York. 


003 


A  Talk  About  Books. 


-4S37 
^     WAS  asked  to  say  something  to  you 

*>  )  about  Books ;  but  when  I  began  to 
collect  my  thoughts  it  seemed  to  me 
that  the  subject  on  which  I  really 
wished  to  speak  is  not  well  defined  by  the 
word  Books. 

If  you  had  been  invited  to  listen   to  a 
discourse  on  Baskets,  you  would  naturally 
ask,  "  Baskets  of  what?"    The  Basket,  in 
itself,  would  seem  to  be  a  topic  so  insig- 
nificant that  you  might  reasonably  object 
to  the  wasting  of  time  on  it.     It  is  a  thing 
which  has  no  worth  of  its  own,  but  bor- 
.^  rows  all    its  useful  value  from  the  things 
^which  are  put  into  it.     It   belongs   to   a 
■   large  class  of  what  may  be  called  the  con- 
junctive utensils  of  mankind  —  the  vessels 
and  vehicles  which  are  good  for  nothing 
but  to  hold  together  and  to  carry  whatever 
it  may  be  that  men  need  to  convey  from 
place  to  place  or  from  one  to  another. 


2  A  Talk  About  Books. 

Now,  Books  are  utensils  of  that  class 
quite  as  distinctly  as  Baskets  are.  In 
themselves,  as  mere  fabrications  of  paper 
and  ink,  they  are  as  worthless  as  empty 
wickerware.  They  differ  from  one  another 
in  value  and  in  interest  precisely  as  a  bas- 
ket of  fruit  differs  from  a  basket  of  coals, 
or  a  basket  of  garbage  from  a  basket  of 
flowers,  which  is  the  difference  of  their 
contents,  and  that  only. 

So  it  is  not,  in  reality,  of  Books  that  I 
wish  to  speak,  but  of  the  contents  of  Books. 
It  may  be  well  for  us  to  think  of  Books  in 
that  way,  as  vessels  —  vehicles  —  carriers 
—  because  it  leads  us,  I  am  sure,  to  more 
clearly  classified  ideas  of  them.  It  puts 
them  all  into  one  category,  to  begin  with, 
as  carriers  in  the  commerce  of  mind  with 
mind ;  which  instantly  suggests  that  there 
are  divisions  of  kind  in  that  commerce, 
very  much  as  there  are  divisions  of  kind 
in  the  mercantile  traffic  of  the  world,  and 
we  proceed  naturally  to  some  proper  assort- 
ing of  the  mind-matter  which  Books  are 
carriers  for.  The  division  we  are  likely  to 
recognize  first  is  one  that  separates  all 
which  we  commonly  describe  to  ourselves 


A  Talk  About  Books.  3 

as  Knowledge,  from  everything  which  mind 
can  exchange  with  mind  that  is  not  Knowl- 
edge, in  the  usual  sense,  but  rather  some 
state  of  feeling.  Then  we  see  very  quickly 
that,  while  Knowledge  is  of  many  kinds,  it 
is  divisible  as  a  whole  into  two  great, 
widely  different  species,  the  line  between 
which  is  an  interesting  one  to  notice. 
One  of  these  species  we  may  call  the 
Knowledge  of  what  has  been,  and  the 
other  we  will  describe  as  the  Knowledge  of 
what  is.  The  first  is  Knowledge  of  the 
Past;  the  second  is  Knowledge  of  the 
Present.  The  first  is  History;  the  second  is 
(using  the  word  in  a  large  sense)  Science. 
We  are  not  straining  the  term  Science  if 
we  make  it  cover  everything,  in  philos- 
ophy, politics,  economics,  arts,  that  is  not 
historical;  and  we  shall  not  be  straining 
the  term  Poetry  if  we  use  that  to  repre- 
sent everything  which  we  have  left  out  of 
the  category  of  positive  Knowledge,  being 
everything  that  belongs  to  imagination 
and  emotion. 

In  History,  Science,  Poetry,  then,  we 
name  the  most  obvious  assorting  of  the 
matter  known  as  Literature,  of  which  Books 


4  A  Talk  About  Books. 

are  the  necessary  carriers.  But  there  is 
another  classification  of  it,  not  often  con- 
sidered, which  is  a  more  important  one,  in 
my  view,  and  which  exhibits  the  function 
of  Books  much  more  impressively.  Draw 
one  broad  line  through  everything  that 
mind  can  receive  from  mind, —  everything, 
—  memory,  thought,  imagination,  sugges- 
tion—  and  put  on  one  side  of  it  all  that  has 
come  from  the  Past,  against  everything,  on 
the  other  side,  that  comes  from  the  Present, 
and  then  meditate  a  little  on  what  it  signi- 
fies !  In  our  first  classification  we  consid- 
ered the  Past  only  with  reference  to  His- 
tory, or  Knowledge  of  the  Past.  Now,  I 
wish  to  put  with  that  all  of  our  Knowledge, 
of  every  kind,  that  has  come  to  us  02{t  of 
the  Past;  and  when  you  have  reflected 
a  moment  you  will  see  that  that  means 
almost  everything  that  we  know.  For  all 
the  Knowledge  now  in  the  possession  of 
mankind  has  been  a  slow  accumulation, 
going  on  through  not  less  than  forty  cen- 
turies. Each  succeeding  generation  has 
learned  just  a  little  that  was  new  to  add 
to  what  it  received  from  the  generations 
before,  and  has  passed  the  inheritance  on 


A  Talk  About  Books.  5 

with  a  trivial  increase.  We  are  apt  to  look 
rather  scornfully  at  any  Science  which  is 
dated  before  1897.  But  where  would  our 
brand-new  discoveries  have  been  without 
the  older  ones  which  led  up  to  them  by 
painful  steps  ?  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  it 
was  an  eye  of  genius  that  caught  the  early 
glimpses  of  things  which  dull  eyes  can  see 
plainly  enough  now. 

Most  of  the  Science,  then,  which  we 
value  so  in  these  days,  has  come  to  us,  in 
the  train  of  all  History,  out  of  the  Past; 
and  Poetry,  too,  has  come  with  them,  and 
Music,  and  the  great  laws  of  righteousness, 
without  which  we  could  be  little  better 
than  the  beasts.  How  vast  an  estate  it 
is  that  we  come  into  as  the  intellectual 
heirs  of  all  the  watchers  and  searchers  and 
thinkers  and  singers  of  the  generations 
that  are  dead!  What  a  heritage  of  stored 
wealth !  What  perishing  poverty  of  mind 
we  should  be  left  in  without  it ! 

Now,  Books  are  the  carriers  of  all  this  ac- 
cumulating heritage  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration; and  that,  I  am  sure  you  will  agree 
with  me,  is  their  most  impressive  function. 
It  will  bear  thinkine  of  a  little  further. 


6  A  Talk  About  Books. 

You  and  I,  who  live  at  this  moment, 
stand  islanded,  so  to  speak,  on  a  narrow 
strand  between  two  great  time-oceans, — 
the  ocean  of  Time  Past  and  the  ocean  of 
Time  to  Come.  When  we  turn  to  one, 
looking  future-ward,  we  see  nothing — not 
even  a  ripple  on  the  face  of  the  silent,  mys- 
terious deep,  which  is  veiled  by  an  impen- 
etrable mist.  We  turn  backward  to  the 
other  sea,  looking  out  across  the  measure- 
less expanse  of  Time  Past,  and,  lo!  it  is 
covered  with  ships.  We  see  them  rise 
from  beyond  the  far  horizon  in  fleets  which 
swarm  upon  the  scene,  and  they  come  sail- 
ing to  us  in  numbers  that  are  greater  than 
we  can  count.  They  are  freighted  with  the 
gifts  of  the  dead  to  us  who  are  the  children 
of  the  dead.  They  bring  us  the  story  of 
the  forgotten  life  of  mankind,  its  experience, 
its  learning,  its  wisdom,  its  warnings,  its 
counsels,  its  consolations,  its  songs,  its  dis- 
coveries of  beauty  and  joy.  What  if  there 
had  been  no  ships  to  bring  us  these? 
Think  of  it!  What  if  the  great  ocean  of 
Time  Past  rolled  as  blankly  and  blackly 
behind  us  as  the  ocean  of  Time  to  Come 
rolls  before  us  ?     What  if  there  were  no 


A  Talk  About  Books.  7 

Letters  and  no  Books  ?  For  the  ships  in 
this  picture  are  those  carriers  of  the  com- 
modities of  mind  which  we  call  Letters  and 
Books. 

Think  what  your  state  would  be  in  a 
situation  like  that !  Think  what  it  would 
be  to  know  nothing,  for  example,  of  the 
way  in  which  American  Independence  had 
been  won,  and  the  federal  republic  of  the 
United  States  constructed ;  nothing  of  Bun- 
ker Hill;  nothing  of  George  Washington; 
except  the  little,  half  true  and  half  mis- 
taken, that  your  fathers  could  remember,  of 
what  their  fathers  had  repeated,  of  what 
their  fathers  had  told  to  them  !  Think  what 
it  would  be  to  have  nothing  but  shadowy 
traditions  of  the  voyage  of  Columbus,  of 
the  coming  of  the  Mayflower  pilgrims,  and 
of  all  the  planting  of  life  in  the  New  World 
from  Old  World  stocks,  like  Greek  legends 
of  the  Argonauts  and  of  the  Heraclidae  ! 
Think  what  it  would  be  to  know  no  more 
of  the  origins  of  the  English  people,  their 
rise  and  their  growth  in  greatness,  than  the 
Romans  knew  of  their  Latin  beginnings ; 
and  to  know  no  more  of  Rome  herself  than 
we  might  guess  from  the  ruins  she  has  left ! 


8  A  Talk  About  Books. 

Think  what  it  would  be  to  have  the  whole 
story  of  Athens  and  Greece  dropped  out  of 
our  knowledge,  and  to  be  unaware  that 
Marathon  was  ever  fought,  or  that  one  like 
Socrates  had  ever  lived !  Think  what  it 
would  be  to  have  no  line  from  Homer,  no 
thought  from  Plato,  no  message  from 
Isaiah,  no  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  nor  any 
parable  from  the  lips  of  Jesus  ! 

Can  you  imagine  a  world  intellectually 
famine-smitten  like  that  —  a  bookless  world 
—  and  not  shrink  with  horror  from  the 
thought  of  being  condemned  to  it? 

Yet, —  and  here  is  the  grim  fact  which  I 
am  most  anxious  to  impress  on  your 
thought, —  the  men  and  the  women  who 
take  nothing  from  letters  and  books  are 
choosing  to  live  as  though  mankind  did 
actually  wallow  in  the  awful  darkness  of 
that  state  from  which  writing  and  books 
have  rescued  us.  For  them,  it  is  as  if  no 
ship  had  ever  come  from  the  far  shores  of 
old  Time  where  their  ancestry  dwelt;  and 
the  interest  of  existence  to  them  is  huddled 
in  the  petty  space  of  their  own  few  years, 
between  walls  of  mist  which  thicken  as 
impenetrably  behind  them  as  before.    How 


A  Talk  About  Books.  g 

can  life  be  worth  living  on  such  terms  as 
that  ?  How  can  man  or  woman  be  content 
with  so  little,  when  so  much  is  proffered  ? 
I  have  dwelt  long  enough  on  the  gen- 
eralized view  of  Books,  their  function  and 
their  value.  It  is  time  that  I  turned  to 
more  definite  considerations. 

You  will  expect  me,  no  doubt,  to  say 
something  of  the  relative  value  of  Books, 
to  indicate  some  principles  in  choosing 
them,  and  to  mark,  perhaps,  some  lines  for 
reading.  There  must  always  be  a  difficulty 
in  that  undertaking  for  any  person  who 
would  give  advice  to  others  concerning 
Books,  though  his  knowledge  of  them  sur- 
passed mine  a  hundredfold.  For  the  same 
book  has  never  the  same  value  for  all 
minds,  and  scarcely  two  readers  can  follow 
the  same  course  in  their  reading  with  the 
same  good.  There  is  a  personal  bent  of  / 
mind  which  ought  to  have  its  way  in  this  | 
matter,  so  far  as  a  deliberate  judgment  in 
the  mind  itself  will  allow.  So  far,  that  is, 
as  one  can  willingly  do  it  who  wisely 
desires  the  fullest  culture  that  his  mind  is 
capable  of  receiving,  he  should  humor  its 


lo  A  Talk  About  Books. 

inclinations.  Against  an  eager  delight  in 
poetry,  for  example,  he  should  not  force 
himself,  I  am  sure,  to  an  obstinate  reading 
of  science ;  nor  vice  versa.  But  the  lover 
of  poetry  who  neglects  science  entirely, 
and  the  devotee  of  science  who  scorns 
acquaintance  with  poetry,  are  equally 
guilty  of  a  foolish  mutilation  of  them- 
selves. The  man  of  science  needs,  even  for 
a  large  apprehension  of  scientific  truth,  and 
still  more  for  a  large  and  healthy  develop- 
ment of  his  own  being,  that  best  exercise 
of  imagination  which  true  poetry  only  can 
give.  The  man  of  poetic  nature,  on  the 
other  hand,  needs  the  discipline  of  judg- 
ment and  reason  for  which  exact  learning 
of  some  kind  is  indispensable. 

So  inclination  is  a  guide  to  follow,  in 
reading  as  in  other  pursuits,  with  extremest 
caution  ;  and  there  is  one  favorite  direction 
in  which  we  can  never  trust  it  safely.  That 
is  down  the  smooth  way  of  indolent  amuse- 
ment, where  the  gardens  of  weedy  romance 
are,  and  the  fields  in  which  idle  gossip  is 
gathered  by  farmers  of  news.  Of  the  value 
of  Romance  in  true  literature,  and  of  the 
intellectual    worth    of   that   knowledge   of 


A  Talk  About  Books.  1 1 

passing  events  which  is  News  in  the  real 
sense,  I  may  possibly  say  something  before 
I    am  done.     I   touch  them  now  only  to 
remark  that  the  inclination  which  draws 
many  people   so   easily   into  a  dissipated 
reading  of  trashy  novels  and  puerile  news- 
gossip  is  something  very  different  from  the  , 
inclination  of  mind  which  carries  some  to  " 
science,  some  to  history,  some  to  poetry. , 
In  the  latter  there  is  a  turn  of  intellect,  a 
push  of  special  faculties,  a  leaning  of  taste, 
which  demand  respect,  as  I  have  said.   The 
former  is  nothing  more  than  one  kind  of  ^ 
the  infirmity  which  produces  laziness  in  all  (^ 
its    modes.     The  state  of  a  novel-steeped 
mind   is  just   that   of  a  lounging,  lolling, 
slouching  body,  awake  and  alive  enough 
for   some   superficial   pleasant   tickling   of 
sense-consciousness,  but   with   all    energy 
drained  out  of  it  and  all  the  joy  of  strength 
in  action  unknown.     It  is  a  loaferish  mind 
that   can   loll   by  the  hour  over  trash  in 
novels  or  trivialities  in  a  newspaper. 

To  come  back  to  the  question  of  choice 
among  good  books :  there  is  a  certain  high 
region  in  all  departments  of  literature  which 
every  reader  who  cares  to  make  the  most 


12  A  Talk  About  Books. 

of  himself  and  the  best  of  life  ought  to 
penetrate  and  become  in  some  measure 
acquainted  with,  whatever  his  personal 
leanings  may  be.  It  is  the  region  of  the 
great  books — the  greatest,  that  is,  of  the 
greater  kinds.  For  the  realm  of  literature 
is  a  vast  universe  of  solar  systems  —  of 
suns  and  satellites ;  and,  while  no  man  can 
hope  to  explore  it  all,  he  may  seek  and  find 
the  central  sources  of  light  in  it  and  take 
an  illumination  from  them  which  no  re- 
flected rays  can  give.  In  Poetry  (which  I 
must  speak  of  again),  I  doubt  if  many 
people  can  read  very  much  of  minor  verse 
—  the  verse  of  merely  ingenious  fancies 
and  melodious  lines  —  with  intellectual 
benefit,  whatever  pleasure  it  may  afford 
them.  But  the  great  poems,  which  fuse 
thought  and  imagination  into  one  glorified 
utterance,  will  carry  an  enrichment  beyond 
measuring  into  any  mind  that  has  capacity 
to  receive  them.  I  believe  that  those  for- 
tunate young  people  who  are  wise  enough, 
or  wisely  enough  directed,  to  engrave  half 
of  Shakespeare  upon  their  memories,  last- 
ingly, in  their  youth,  with  something  of 
Milton,  something  of  Goethe,  something  of 


A  Talk  About  Books.  13 

Wordsworth,  something  of  Keats,  some-  1 
thing  of  Tennyson,  something  of  Browning, 
something  of  Dante,  something  of  Homer 
and  the  Greek  dramatists,  with  much  of 
Hebrew  poetry  from  the  Bible,  have  made 
a  noble  beginning  of  the  fullest  and  finest  e 
culture  that  is  possible.  To  memorize  great 
poems  in  early  life  is  to  lay  a  store  in  the 
mind  for  which  its  happy  possessor  can 
never  be  too  thankful  in  after  years.  I  speak 
from  experience,  not  of  the  possession  of 
such  a  store,  but  of  the  want  of  it.  I  have 
felt  the  want  greatly  since  I  came  to  years 
when  memory  will  not  take  deposits  gra- 
ciously, nor  keep  them  with  faithfulness,  and 
I  warn  you  that  if  these  riches  are  to  be  yours 
at  all  you  must  gather  them  in  your  youth. 
A  great  poem  is  like  a  mountain  top, 
which  invites  one  toward  the  heavens,  into 
a  new  atmosphere,  and  a  new  vision  of  the 
world,  and  a  new  sense  of  being.  There 
are  no  other  equal  heights  in  literature 
except  those  which  have  been  attained  by 
a  few  teachers  of  the  divinest  truth,  who 
have  borne  messages  of  righteousness  to 
mankind.  Even  as  literature,  to  be  read 
for  nothing  more  than  their  quality   and 


14  A  Talk  About  Books. 

their  influence  as  such,  what  can  compare 
with  the  parables  and  discourses  of  Jesus, 
as  reported  in  the  Gospels?  I  know  of 
nothing  else  that  comes  nearer  to  them 
than  a  few  of  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  which 
exhibit  the  character  and  represent  the 
higher  teachings  of  Socrates.  The  three 
dialogues  called  the  Apology,  the  Crito,  and 
the  Ph(Edo,  which  tell  the  sublime  story  of 
the  trial  and  death  of  Socrates,  are  writings 
that  I  would  put  next  to  the  books  of  the 
Evangelists  in  the  library  of  every  young 
reader.  They  were  separately  published  a 
few  years  ago,  in  a  small,  attractive  volume, 
under  the  title  of  The  Trial  and  Death  of 
Socrates,  and  they  are  also  to  be  found  in 
the  second  volume  of  the  fine  translation  of 
Plato  made  by  Professor  Jowett.  Another 
selection  of  half  a  dozen  of  the  best  of  the 
Socratic  dialogues  can  be  had  in  a  charm- 
ing little  book  entitled  Talks  with  Athenian 
Youths.  By  the  side  of  these,  I  would  put 
the  Thoughts  of  the  Emperor  Marcus 
Aurelius  and  the  Enchiridion  of  Epictetus  ; 
and  not  far  from  them  I  would  place  the 
Essays  of  Lord  Bacon  and  of  our  own  wise 
Emerson. 


A  Talk  About  Books.  1 5 

These  are  books,  not  of  mere  Knowledge,  \ 
but  of  Wisdom,  which  is  far  above  Knowl-  ( 
edge.      Knowledge    is    brought   into    the  / 
mind ;   Wisdom  is   from  its  own  springs.  ) 
Knowledge  is  the  fruit  of  learning ;   Wis-  \  q 
dom  is  the  fruit  of  meditation.    Knowledge  / 
is  related  to  the  facts  of  life,  and  to  man  in  ) 
his  dependence  on  them  ;    Wisdom  is  con- 
cerned with  life  itself,  and  with  man  in  his 
own  being.     Knowledge  equips  us  for  our 
duties  and  tasks  ;    Wisdom  lights  them  up 
for  us.     The  great  meditative  books,  such 
as  these  I  have  named,  are  books  that  have 
lifted,    exalted,     illuminated     millions     of 
minds,  and  their  power  will  never  be  spent. 
A  book  of  science  grows  stale  with  age,    ^ 
and  is  superseded  by  another.     The  book 
of  wisdom  can  never    grow  old.     But   in 
this  age  of  science  it  is  apt  to  be  neglected,y, 
and  therefore  I  speak  with  some  pleading  i 
for  it.     Do  not  pass  it  by  in  your  reading. 

In  what  I  say  to  you,  I  am  thinking  of 
books  as  we  use  them  in  reading,  not  in  -^'^ 
study.  Study  has  some  special  cultivation 
of  mind  or  particular  acquisition  in  view ; 
reading  is  a  more  general,  discursive,  and 
lighter  pursuit  of  the  good  that  is  in  books. 


1 6  A  Talk  About  Books. 

Now,  it  is  looking  at  them  in  that  way, 
broadly,  that  I  will  make  a  few  suggestions 
about  books  which  belong  in  what  I  have 
classed  as  the  literature  of  Knowledge.  I 
would  award  the  highest  place  in  that  class 
to  History,  because  it  gives  more  exer- 
cise than  any  other,  not  alone  to  every 
faculty  of  our  intelligence  —  to  our  reason, 
our  judgment,  our  memory,  and  our  imagi- 
nation —  but  to  every  moral  sensibility  we 
possess.  But  if  History  is  to  be  read  with 
that  effect  it  must  not  be  read  as  a  mere 
collection  of  stories  of  war  and  battle,  revo- 
lution and  adventure.  It  must  not  be 
traversed  as  one  strolls  through  a  picture 
gallery,  looking  at  one  thing  in  a  frame 
here,  and  another  thing  in  a  frame  there, 
—  an  episode  depicted  by  this  historian, 
an  epoch  by  that  one,  the  career  of  a 
nation  by  a  third, —  each  distinct  from 
every  other,  in  its  own  framing,  and  con- 
sidered in  itself  To  read  Iii^i£i£y  in  that 
way  is  to  lose  all  its  meaning  and  teaching. 
On  the  contrary,  we  must  keep  always  in 
our  minds  a  view  of  History  as  one  great 
whole,  and  the  chief  interest  we  find  in  it 
should  be  that  of  discovering  the  connec- 


A  Talk  About  Books.  I'j 

tion  and  relation  of  each  part  to  other 
parts.  Of  course,  we  have  to  pick  up  our 
knowledge  of  it  in  pieces  and  sections ;  but 
only  as  fast  as  we  can  put  them  together, 
and  acquire  a  wide,  comprehensive  survey 
of  events  and  movements,  in  many  coun- 
tries, will  historical  knowledge  become 
real  knowledge  to  us,  and  its  interest  and 
value  be  disclosed  to  our  minds.  We  see 
then  what  a  seamless  web  it  is,  woven  as 
Goethe  describes  it,  in  "  the  roaring  loom 
of  time,"  of  unbroken  threads  which 
stretch  from  the  beginning  of  the  life  of 
men  on  the  earth,  and  which  will  spin  on- 
ward to  the  end.  We  read  then  the  history 
of  our  own  country  as  a  part  of  the  history 
of  the  English  people,  and  the  history  of 
the  English  people  as  a  part  of  the  history 
of  the  Germanic  race,  and  Germanic  his- 
tory in  its  close  sequence  to  Roman  his- 
tory, and  Roman  history  as  the  outcome 
of  conditions  which  trace  back  to  Greece 
and  the  ancient  East.  We  read  the  thrill- 
ing narrative  of  our  great  civil  war,  not  as 
a  tragical  story  which  begins  at  Sumter  and 
ends  at  Appomattox,  but  as  the  tremendous 
catastrophe  of  a  long,  inflexible  series    of 


1 8  A  Talk  About  Books. 

effects  and  causes  which  runs  back  from  the 
New  World  into  the  Old,  and  through  centu- 
ries of  time,  slowly  engendering  the  conflict 
which  exploded  at  last  in  the  rebellion  of  a 
slave-holding  self-interest  against  the  hard- 
won  supremacy  of  a  national  conscience. 

Concerning  History,  then,  I  come  back 
again,  with  special  emphasis,  to  the  counsel 
I  gave  generally  before :  read  the  great 
books,  which  spread  it  for  you  in  large 
views.  Whatever  you  may  seek  in  the 
way  of  minute  details  and  close  studies, 
here  and  there,  for  this  and  that  period  and 
country,  get  a  general  groundwork  for 
them  in  your  mind  from  the  comprehensive 
surveys  of  the  great  historians.  Above  all, 
read  Gibbon.  If  you  would  comprehend 
modern  History,  you  must  read  his  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  is  the 
one  fundamental  work.  Though  it  is  old, 
nothing  supersedes  it.  It  is  an  unequaled, 
unapproached  panorama  of  more  than  a 
thousand  years  of  time,  crowded  with  the 
most  pregnant  events,  on  the  central  stage 
of  human  history.  Whatever  else  you 
read  or  do  not  read,  you  cannot  afford  to 
neglect  Gibbon. 


A  Talk  About  Books.  19 

Of  the  ages  before  Gibbon's  period,  in 
Roman,  Greek,  and  Oriental  history,  there 
is  nothing  which  offers  a  really  large,  com- 
prehensive survey.  But  Maspero,  Sayce, 
McCurdy,  Thirlwall,  Grote,  Curtius,  Ma- 
haffy,  Mommsen,  Merivale,  are  of  the  best. 
For  a  brief,  clear  account  of  the  Roman  Re- 
public, sketching  its  inner  rather  than  its  sur- 
face history,  I  know  of  nothing  else  so  good 
as  Horton's  History  of  the  Roman  People. 

Generally,  as  regards  ancient  history, 
there  is  a  warning  which  I  find  to  be  often 
needed.  Within  quite  recent  years  the  dis- 
coveries that  have  been  made,  by  digging 
into  buried  ruins  of  old  cities,  bringing  to 
light  and  comparing  great  numbers  of 
records  from  the  remotest  times,  preserved 
by  their  inscription  on  earthen  tablets  and 
on  stone,  have  so  added  to  and  so  corrected 
our  knowledge  of  ancient  history  that  the 
narratives  of  the  older  historians  have  be- 
come of  little  worth.  It  is  an  utter  waste 
of  time,  for  example,  to  read  the  venerable 
Rollin,  new  editions  of  whose  history  are 
still  being  published  and  sold.  You  might 
as  well  go  to  Ptolemy  for  astronomy,  or  to 
Aristotle  for  physical  science.    It  is  a  worse 


20  A  Talk  About  Books. 

waste  of  time  to  read  Abbott  histories,  and 
their  kind.     Beware  of  them. 

Mediaeval  history,  too,  and  many  peri- 
ods more  modern,  have  received  new  light 
which  discredits  more  or  less  the  historians 
who  were  trusted  a  generation  or  two  ago. 
Hallam  is  found  to  be  wrong  in  important 
parts  of  his  view  of  the  institutions  of  feud- 
alism. Hume  is  seen  to  give  untrue  repre- 
sentations of  English  political  history  at 
some  of  its  chief  turning  points.  Macaulay 
has  done  frequent  injustice  in  his  powerful 
arraignment  of  great  actors  on  the  British 
stage.  The  study  and  the  writing  of  his- 
tory have  become  more  painstaking,  more 
accurate,  more  dispassionate,  less  partisan 
and  less  eloquent,  but  more  just.  We  get 
the  surest  and  broadest  views  of  it  in  Free- 
man, Stubbs,  Maitland,  Green,  Gairdner, 
Gardiner,  Ranke,  May,  Lecky,  and  Seeley 
for  English  history,  with  Bagehot  to  de- 
scribe the  present  working  of  the  English 
Constitution. 

In  continental  history,  mediaeval  and 
modern,  I  will  mention  just  a  few  among 
many  of  the  books  which  I  think  can  be 
safely  recommended :  Church's  Beginnings 


A  Talk  About  Books.  21 

of  the  Middle  Ages,  Emerton's  Mediceval 
Europe,  Henderson's  Germany  in  the  Mid- 
dle Ages,  Bryce's  Holy  Roman  Empire, 
some  of  Freeman's  Historical  Essays,  Mil- 
man's  History  of  Latin  Christianity,  Sy- 
monds's  Renaissance  in  Italy,  Trollope's 
Commonwealth  of  Florence,  Ranke's  and 
Creighton's  histories  of  the  Papacy  in  the 
sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  Haus- 
ser's  Period  of  the  Reformation,  Baird's 
Huguenot  histories,  Motley's  Rise  of  the 
Dutch  Republic  and  United  Netherlands, 
Gindely  or  Gardiner's  Thirty  Years  War, 
Perkins's  France  under  Mazarin,  and  France 
under  the  Regency,  Rocquain's  Revolutionary 
Spirit  Preceding  the  Revolution,  Stephen's 
French  Revolution,  Sloane's  History  of 
Napoleon,  or  Seeley's  Short  History,  Thay- 
er's Dawn  of  Italian  Independence,  Fyffe's 
History  of  Modern  Europe,  Andrews's  His- 
torical Development  of  Modern  Europe,  and 
the  series  by  different  writers  now  in  course 
of  publication  entitled  Periods  of  European 
History.  Moreover,  the  little  books  in  the 
series  called  Epochs  of  English  History  and 
Epochs  of  Modern  History  are  almost  all 
of  them  excellent. 


22  A  Talk  About  Books. 

Into  American  history  it  is  best,  for  sev- 
eral reasons,  that  we,  of  this  country,  should 
go  more  thoroughly  than  into  that  of 
other  countries.  One  who  tries  to  get  his 
knowledge  of  it  from  a  single  book  or  two 
will  remain  very  ignorant.  The  best  of 
the  general  narratives  which  attempt  to 
cover  the  whole,  from  Columbus,  or  even 
from  Captain  John  Smith,  to  President 
McKinley,  are  only  sketches  that  need  to 
be  filled.  Take  from  Fiske,  as  far  as  he  will 
go  with  you,  the  story  of  The  Discovery 
of  America,  of  the  Beginnings  of  New  Eng- 
land, of  the  Revolution,  and  of  the  Critical 
Period  which  followed  it,  down  to  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Federal  Constitution.  If  you 
go  over  the  same  ground  again  in  Bancroft 
you  will  do  well ;  and  you  will  do  still 
better,  for  your  own  delight,  if  you  stay 
long  enough  in  colonial  times  to  read  all 
that  Parkman  has  written  of  the  French  in 
America  and  of  their  great  effort  to  possess 
the  continent.  Irving,  in  his  Life  of  Wash- 
ington, and  McMaster,  in  his  History  of  the 
People  of  the  United  States,  will  give  you 
a  good  knowledge  of  the  first  years  of  the 
republic ;    but  you  will    never    understand 


A  Talk  About  Books.  23 

Jefferson  and  Madison,  and  the  rise  of  the 
great  old  pohtical  parties,  and  the  War  of 
18 1 2  with  England,  if  you  do  not  read  the 
history  written  by  Henry  Adams,  which 
covers  the  time  between  John  Adams  and 
Monroe.  For  the  next  third  of  a  century, 
I  would  trust  to  Hoist's  Constitutional  and 
Political  History,  and  Professor  Burgess's 
history  of  The  Middle  Period,  as  it  is  named 
in  the  American  History  Series.  These 
works  are  made  unnecessarily  hard  reading 
by  their  style,  but  they  are  full  of  good 
instruction.  With  them  I  would  place 
half  a  dozen  of  the  biographies  in  the  series 
of  the  American  Statesmen,  for  side  lights 
thrown  upon  the  politics  of  the  time.  Then 
take  Rhodes's  history  from  the  compromise 
of  1850,  which  carries  you  into  the  Civil 
War;  and  for  that  great  struggle  I  consider 
Nicolay  and  Hay's  Abraham  Lincoln  to  be, 
on  the  whole,  the  best  history  that  has  been 
written  yet.  It  is  a  huge  work,  in  many 
volumes,  but  no  one  who  reads  it  will  waste 
time  or  easily  tire.  Along  with  it  should 
be  read  the  collected  writings  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  which  are  the  most  lasting  litera- 
ture, excepting,  perhaps,  Emerson's  Essays, 


24  A  Talk  Abotit  Books. 

that  America  has  produced.  As  a  whole 
series  of  state  papers,  I  believe  that  the 
speeches,  letters,  messages  and  proclama- 
tions of  President  Lincoln  are  the  most 
extraordinary,  in  wisdom,  in  spirit,  and  in 
composition,  that  ever  came,  in  any  country 
or  any  age,  from  the  tongue  and  pen  of 
one  man.  You  will  find  it  an  education, 
both  in  literature  and  in  politics,  to  read 
them  again  and  again.  Read,  too,  the 
simply  and  nobly  written  Personal  Memoirs 
of  General  Grant,  with  those  of  Sherman, 
Sheridan,  and  Joe  Johnston,  Long's  Life  of 
Lee,  Blaine's  Twenty  Years  in  Congress, 
and  your  knowledge  of  rebellion  history 
will  be  quite  complete.  Then  cap  your 
reading  in  this  region  of  history  and  poli- 
tics with  Bryce's  American  CommonweaWi, 
and  I  would  have  no  great  desire  to  urge 
more. 

Bjographv  is  in  one  sense  a  part  of  His- 
tory ;  but  that  which  interests  us  in  it  most, 
and  from  which  we  take  the  most  good,  if 
we  take  any,  is  more  than  historical.  The 
story  of  a  life  which  offers  nothing  but 
its  incidents,  informs  us  of  nothing  but  its 
achievements,  was  never  worth  the  telling. 


A  Talk  About  Books.  25 

Fill  it  with  romance,  or  glorify  it  with  great 
triumphs,  and  still  there  is  small  worth  in 
it.  If  he  who  lived  the  life  is  not  in  him- 
self more  interesting  and  more  significant 
to  us  than  all  the  circumstance  of  his  life, 
then  the  circumstance  is  vainly  set  forth. 
What  Biography  at  its  best  can  give  us,  as 
the  finest  form  of  History,  and  as  more 
than  History,  is  the  personal  revelation, 
the  in-seen  portraiture  of  here  and  there  a 
human  soul  which  is  not  common  in  its 
quality.  The  exemplars  that  it  sets  most 
abundantly  before  us,  of  a  vulgar  kind  of 
practical  success  in  the  world  —  the  success 
of  a  mere  self-seeking  talent  and  industry 
applied  to  private  business  or  to  public 
affairs  —  are  well  enough  in  their  way, 
and  may  make  some  small  impressions 
of  good  effect  on  some  minds ;  but  we 
take  no  inspiration  from  them  —  they  give 
us  no  ideals.  What  we  ought  to  seek 
everywhere  in  books  is  escape  from  the 
commonplace  —  the  commonplace  in 
thought  and  the  commonplace  in  char- 
acter with  which  our  daily  life  surrounds 
us.  Our  chief  dependence  is  on  books 
to    bring-    us    into    intercourse    with    the 


26  A  Talk  About  Books. 

picked,  choice  examples  of  human  kind; 
to  show  us  what  they  are  or  what  they  have 
been,  as  well  as  what  they  have  thought, — 
what  they  have  done,  as  well  as  what  they 
have  said, —  with  what  motives,  from  what 
impulses,  with  what  powers,  to  what  ends, 
in  what  spirit,  the  work  of  their  lives  has 
been  done.  When  Biography  does  that  for 
us  it  is  one  of  the  most  precious  forms  of 
literature.  But  when  it  only  crams  our 
library  shelves  with  "  process-print "  pic- 
tures, so  to  speak,  of  commonplace  charac- 
ters in  commonplace  settings  of  life,  we 
waste  time  in  reading  it.  I  know  people 
who  relish  Biography  as  they  would  relish 
gossip  in  talk,  delighting  in  disclosures  from 
other  men's  and  other  women's  lives,  no 
matter  how  trivial,  and  all  the  more,  per- 
haps, when  some  spicing  of  scandal  is  in 
them.  So  far  as  it  invites  reading  in  that 
spirit  there  is  nothing  to  commend  it.  But 
I  have  never  known  one  who  enjoyed  what 
may  be  called  the  fine  flavors  of  character 
in  biography  who  had  not  fine  tastes  in  all 
literature. 

The   composition  of   Biography   would 
seem  to    be    one    of  the   most  difficult  of 


A  Talk  About  Books.  27 

literary  arts,  since  masterpieces  in  it  are 
so  few.  The  delightful  and  the  noble  sub- 
jects that  have  been  offered  to  it  in  every 
age  of  the  world  are  abounding  in  num- 
ber, but  how  many  have  been  worthily 
treated?  One  can  almost  count  on  his 
fingers  the  biographical  works  that  hold  a 
classic  place  in  common  esteem.  Generally, 
of  the  best  and  greatest  and  most  beautiful 
lives  that  have  been  lived  there  is  no  story 
which  communicates  the  grandeur  or  the 
charm  as  we  ought  to  be  made  to  feel  it. 

The  most  famous  of  biographies,  that  of 
Doctor  Samuel  Johnson  by  his  admiring 
friend  Boswell,  has  a  strong  and  striking 
personality  for  its  subject ;  but  who  can  read 
it  without  wishing  that  some  figure  more 
impressive  in  human  history  stood  where 
a  strange  fortune  has  put  the  sturdy  old 
Tory,  in  the  wonderful  light  that  reveals 
him  so  immortally  ?  Among  literary  men, 
Sir  Walter  Scott  has  come  nearer,  perhaps, 
than  any  other  to  Doctor  Johnson's  good 
fortune,  in  the  life  of  him  written  by  Lock- 
hart,  his  son-in-law.  Trevelyan's  Life  and 
Letters  of  Macaulay,  and  the  Memoirs  of 
Charles  Kingsley  by  his  wife,  are  probably 


28  A  Talk  About  Books. 

the  best  of  later  examples  in  literary  bi- 
ography. But  in  a  certain  view  all  the 
more  eminent  Men  of  Letters,  English  and 
American,  may  be  called  biographically 
fortunate  since  the  publication  in  England 
and  America  of  the  two  series  of  small 
biographies  so  named.  It  is  true  that 
these  are  rather  to  be  looked  upon  as 
critical  studies  and  sketches  than  as  biog- 
raphies in  the  adequate  sense ;  but  most 
of  them  are  remarkably  good  in  their  way, 
and  for  these  busy  days  of  many  books 
they  may  suffice.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
Twelve  English  Statesmen  series  in  political 
biography,  as  well  as  of  the  series  of  Amer- 
ican Statesmen,  alluded  to  before. 

Using  the  term  "  study  "  in  the  sense  in 
which  artists  use  it,  when,  for  example,  they 
distinguish  between  a  portrait  and  a  "  study 
of  a  head,"  I  should  apply  it  to  a  large 
class  of  biographical  sketches  which  are 
as  true  to  literary  art  as  the  most  finished 
biography  could  be,  and  only  lack  its  com- 
pleteness in  detail.  The  prototype  of  all 
such  writings  is  found  in  Plutarch's  Lives, 
which  are  studies — comparative  studies  — 
of  the  great   characters  of  antiquity,  and 


A  Talk  Abend  Books.  29 

models  to  this  day  of  their  kind.  As  we 
have  them  in  Dryden's  translation  revised 
by  Clough,  or  in  the  old  translation  by 
North  which  Shakespeare  used,  there  is 
no  better  reading  for  old  or  for  young. 

Scientific  biography  is  at  its  best,  I 
should  say,  in  the  Life  and  Letters  of 
Charles  Darwin^  by  his  son.  But  the  story 
of  the  Life  of  Thomas  Edward,  the  humble 
Scotch  naturalist,  as  told  by  Doctor  Samuel 
Smiles,  is  hardly  to  be  surpassed  as  a  book 
of  edification  and  delight,  especially  for  the 
young.  Smiles's  Life  of  Robert  Dick  is 
nearly  but  not  quite  as  good ;  and  the 
Autobiography  of  James  Nasmyth,  man  ot 
science  and  great  engineer,  edited  by  the 
same  skillful  hand,  is  one  of  the  books 
which  I  never  lose  an  opportunity  to  press 
upon  boys,  for  the  sake  of  the  wonderful 
example  it  sets  before  them  of  a  thoughtful 
plan  of  life  perseveringly  carried  out,  from 
beginning  to  end.  Other  works  of  Smiles  in 
industrial  biography  —  lives  of  Watts,  the 
Stephensons,and  many  more — are  all  excep- 
tionally interesting  and  wholesome  to  read. 

Franklin's  autobiography,  in  the  same 
line  of  interest  and  influence,  is  one  of  the 


30  A  Talk  About  Books. 

books  which  the  world  would  be  greatly- 
poorer  without.  Grimm's  Life  of  Michael 
Angelo  takes  a  kindred  lesson  of  life  and 
lifts  it  to  a  setting  more  heroic.  Goethe's 
autobiography,  and  his  Conversatio7is  with 
Eckermami,  are  of  the  books  that  stamp 
themselves  ineffaceably  on  a  receptive  mind 
and  that  ought  to  be  read  before  the  enthu- 
siasms of  youth  are  outworn. 

But  I  am  particularizing  books  much 
more  than  it  was  my  intention  to  do.  I 
had  planned  a  hasty  excursion  along  the 
watersheds  of  literature,  so  to  speak,  just 
to  notice  some  features  of  the  geography 
of  the  world  of  books,  and  point  here  and 
there  to  a  monument  that  seemed  impor- 
tant in  my  view.  To  assume  to  be  really 
a  guide  for  any  other  reading  than  my  own 
is  more  than  I  am  willing  to  undertake. 

Into  the  region  of  Science  I  shall  not 
venture  at  all,  nor  into  any  of  the  prov- 
inces of  the  Arts. 


For  a  moment,  before  I  close,  let  me  go 
back  to  speak  of  Romance  and  the  reading 


A  Talk  About  Books.  31 

of  it,  as  I  promised  to  do.  "  Light  litera- 
ture "  is  the  term  we  are  accustomed  to 
hear  applied,  without  much  discrimination, 
to  the  whole  class  in  which  it  belongs.  I 
do  not  like  the  term,  if  it  is  used  dispara- 
gingly and  for  all  Romance.  The  literature 
that  is  weighted  with  the  fruits  of  the 
genius  of  Thackeray,  Dickens,  George 
Eliot,  Scott,  Hawthorne,  DeFoe,  cannot 
justly  be  called  "light."  The  lightness 
which  it  has  is  the  lightness  of  the  spirit 
of  Art, —  the  lightness  which  Art  takes 
from  the  wings  on  which  it  is  exalted,  and 
whereby  it  has  the  power  to  transport  us 
high  and  far,  and  make  us  travelers  beyond 
the  swimming  of  ships  or  the  rolling  of 
wheels.  The  modern  Romance,  or  novel, 
is  the  heir  and  successor  of  the  Epic  and 
the  Drama,  and  holds  the  important  place 
in  literature  which  they  held  in  former 
times.  If  Shakespeare  were  living  in  these 
days,  I  do  not  doubt  that  we  should  have 
more  novels  from  his  pen  than  plays.  As 
a  true  product  of  art  in  literature,  the  novel 
seems  to  me  to  be  a  great  instrument  of 
education,  in  the  large  sense  of  the  word  — 
not  for  all  men  and  women,  perhaps,  but 


32  A  Talk  About  Books. 

for  most,  and  especially  for  those  whose 
lives  are  narrow  and  constrained.  There 
are  not  many  of  us  who  do  not  owe  to  it 
some  reaches  and  happy  vistas  of  the  intel- 
lectual landscape  in  which  we  live,  and  the 
compass  of  our  thoughts,  feelings,  sym- 
pathies, tolerances,  would  shrink  sadly  if 
they  were  taken  away.  It  is  only  a  little 
region  of  actual  things  that  we  can  include 
in  our  personal  horizons  —  a  few  people,  a 
few  communities,  a  few  groups  and  growths 
of  society,  a  few  places,  a  few  situations 
and  arrangements  of  circumstance,  a  few 
movements  of  events,  that  we  can  know 
and  be  familiar  with  by  any  intimacy  and 
experience  of  our  own.  But  how  easily 
our  neighborhoods  and  acquaintances  are 
multiplied  for  us  by  the  hospitable  genius 
of  the  novelist!  To  be  put  in  companion- 
ship with  Caleb  Garth  and  Adam  Bede 
and  Doctor  Maclure;  with  Colonel  New- 
combe  and  Henry  Esmond ;  to  meet  Mrs. 
Poyser  and  Mr.  Weller ;  to  visit  in  Barset- 
shire  with  Mr.  Trollope,  and  loiter  through 
Alsace  with  the  Messrs.  Erckmann  and 
Chatrian;  to  look  on  Saxon  England  with 
the  imagination  of  Kingsley,  on  eighteenth- 


A  Talk  About  Books.  33 

century  England  with  the  sympathetic 
understanding  of  Thackeray,  on  Puritan 
Massachusetts  with  the  clairvoyance  of 
Hawthorne, —  how  large  and  many  sided 
a  life  would  have  to  be  to  embrace  in  its 
actualities  so  much  of  a  ripening  education 
as  that ! 

There  is  no  reading  more  wholesome, 
within  temperate  bounds,  than  the  novel, 
if  we  choose  that  which  is  pure  art  from 
that  which  is  spurious  and  base.  The 
danger  of  the  reading  is  in  the  lure  of  the 
pleasurable  excitement  which  it  affords, 
and  which  is  apt  to  tempt  us  too  far,  to  the 
neglect  of  other  books.  But  it  is  the  lure 
which  we  have  to  resist  in  all  pleasure,  and 
we  can  make  no  greater  mistake  than  we 
do  if  we  condemn  pleasure  because  of  its 
allurements.  The  refinements  of  life  come 
chiefly  from  its  pleasures.  That  is  true  to 
an  extent  which  is  sure  to  surprise  us  when 
we  think  of  it  first.  Unfortunately,  it  is  no 
less  true  that  the  meaner  influences  which 
vitiate  and  vulgarize  life,  making  it  gross 
and  coarse,  come  from  the  pleasure  side  of 
existence  too.  There  the  main  sources  of 
the   two   are  together;    on  one  hand,  the 


34  -^  Talk  About  Books. 

springs  of  all  art  —  music,  poetry,  romance, 
drama,  sculpture,  painting  —  brimmed  with 
delights  of  the  imagination  and  the  joy  of 
the  beauty  of  the  world ;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  muddy  wells  into  which  so  many 
people  choose  perversely  to  dip.  These 
contrary  influences  are  working  in  every 
region  of  pleasurable  art,  but  nowhere  else 
so  actively  as  in  the  field  of  letters,  and  we 
encounter  them  at  every  turn  when  we  go 
among  books  seeking  mainly  to  be  enter- 
tained. Especially  they  divide  the  flood  of 
fiction  into  two  streams,  one  of  which  is 
distinguished  from  the  other  by  a  thousand 
impure  stains.  On  which  of  the  two  cur- 
rents an  offered  book  of  entertainment  is 
floated  to  us  is  what  we  must  know,  if  we 
can.  Whether  it  is  brilliant  or  common- 
place, alive  with  genius  or  dead  with  the 
lack,  are  not  the  first  questions  to  be  asked. 
The  prior  question,  as  I  conceive,  is  this  :  ,- 
Does  the  book  leave  any  kind  of  fine  a7id  '*) 
wholesome  feeling  in  the  inijid  of  one  zvho  '\ 
reads  it?  That  is  not  a  question  concern- 
ing the  mere  morality  of  the  book,  in  the 
conventional  meaning  of  the  term.  It 
touches  the  whole  quality  of  the  work  as 


A  Talk  About  Books.  35 

one  of  true  literature.  Does  it  leave  any 
kind  of  fine  and  wholesome  feeling  in  the 
mind  of  one  who  reads  it?  There  is  no 
mistaking  a  feeling  of  that  nature,  though 
it  may  never  seem  twice  the  same  in  our 
experience  of  it.  Sometimes  it  may  be  to 
us  as  though  we  had  eaten  of  good  food ; 
at  other  times  like  the  exhilaration  of  wine ; 
at  others,  again,  like  a  draught  of  water 
from  a  cool  spring.  Some  books  that  we 
read  will  make  us  feel  that  we  are  lifted  as 
on  wings ;  some  will  make  music  within 
us;  some  will  just  fill  us  with  a  happy 
content.  In  such  feelings  there  is  a  refining 
potency  that  is  equaled  in  nothing  else. 
The  simplest  art  is  as  sure  to  produce 
them  as  the  highest.  We  take  them  from 
Burns's  Lines  to  a  Mouse,  from  Words- 
worth's Poor  Susan,  from  the  story  of  Ruth, 
from  the  story  of  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield, 
from  the  story  of  Picciola,  from  the  story 
of  Daddy  Darwin's  Dovecot,  as  certainly  as 
from  Hamlet  or  from  Henry  Esmond.  The 
true  pleasure,  the  fine  pleasure,  the  civili- 
zing pleasure,  to  be  drawn  from  any  form  of 
art  is  one  which  leaves  a  distinctly  whole- 
some feeling  of  some  such  nature  as  these 


36  A  Talk  Abotd  Books. 

which  I  have  tried  to  describe;  and  the 
poem,  the  romance,  the  play,  the  music,  or 
the  picture  which  has  nothing  of  the  sort 
to  give  us,  but  only  a  moment  of  sensation 
and  then  blankness,  does  no  kind  of  good, 
however  innocent  of  positive  evil  it  may  be. 
If  the  wholesome  feeling  which  all  true 
art  produces,  in  literature  or  elsewhere,  is 
unmistakable,  so,  too,  are  those  feelings  of 
the  other  nature  which  works  of  an  oppo- 
site character  give  rise  to.  Our  minds  are 
as  sensitive  to  a  moral  force  of  gravitation 
as  our  bodies  are  sensitive  to  the  physical 
force,  and  we  are  as  conscious  of  the  down- 
ward pull  upon  us  of  a  vulgar  tale  or  a 
vicious  play  as  we  are  conscious  of  the 
buoyant  lift  of  one  that  is  nobly  written. 
We  have,  likewise,  a  mental  touch,  to 
which  the  texture  of  coarse  literature  is  as 
distinct  a  fact  as  the  grit  in  a  muddy  road 
that  we  grind  with  our  heels.  And  so  I 
will  say  again,  that  the  conclusive  test  for 
a  book  which  offers  pleasure  rather  than 
knowledge  is  in  the  question.  Does  it  leave 
any  kind  of  zvholesonie  and  fine  feeling  in 
the  mind  of  one  who  reads  it  ? 


t4      ^^^^ 


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